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Environmental Flow Regimes for Dysidea avara Sponges

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Abstract

The aim of our research is to design tank systems to culture Dysidea avara for the production of avarol. Flow information was needed to design culture tanks suitable for effective production. Water flow regimes were characterized over a 1-year period for a shallow rocky sublittoral environment in the Northwestern Mediterranean where D. avara sponges are particularly abundant. Three-dimensional Doppler current velocities at 8–10-m depths ranged from 5 to 15 cm/s over most seasons, occasionally spiking to 30–66 cm/s. A thermistor flow sensor was used to map flow fields in close proximity (≈2 cm) to individual sponges at 4.5-, 8.8-, and 14.3-m depths. These “proximal flows” averaged 1.6 cm/s in calm seas and 5.9 cm/s during a storm, when the highest proximal flow (32.9 cm/s) was recorded next to a sponge at the shallowest station. Proximal flows diminished exponentially with depth, averaging 2.6 cm/s ± 0.15 SE over the entire study. Flow visualization studies showed that oscillatory flow (0.20–0.33 Hz) was the most common regime around individual sponges. Sponges at the 4.5-m site maintained a compact morphology with large oscula year-around despite only seasonally high flows. Sponges at 8.8 m were more erect with large oscula on tall protuberances. At the lowest-flow 14.3-m site, sponges were more branched and heavily conulated, with small oscula. The relationship between sponge morphology and ambient flow regime is discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by EU Project no. 017800. We acknowledge the diving assistance of Marieke Koopmans, Marzia Sidri, and Detmer Sipkema. We thank the Fentons for their gracious generosity in providing their seaside villa at Cala Illa Mateua for use as our dive expedition headquarters. We thank Hans Meijer of the WUR/ATV electronics shop for his innovative design and fabrication of the thermistor and 3-D Doppler instrument packages and Jos van den Boogaart WUR/EZO for facilitating the calibration tows of the thermistor probe and help with graphics for the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bioprocess Engineering Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Dominick Mendola, Sonia de Caralt, Fred van den End & René H. Wijffels

  2. CSIC Centre for Advanced Studies, Blanes, Girona, Spain

    Sonia de Caralt & Maria J. Uriz

  3. Experimental Zoology Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Dominick Mendola & Johan L. Van Leeuwen

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  1. Dominick Mendola
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  2. Sonia de Caralt
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  3. Maria J. Uriz
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  4. Fred van den End
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  5. Johan L. Van Leeuwen
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  6. René H. Wijffels
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Correspondence to René H. Wijffels.

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Mendola, D., de Caralt, S., Uriz, M.J. et al. Environmental Flow Regimes for Dysidea avara Sponges. Mar Biotechnol 10, 622–630 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-008-9102-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-008-9102-0

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